Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Dead pel­i­cans are con­tin­u­ing to washashore on the beach­es of La Brea more than a week af­ter oil pel­lets and sheets of crude oil sur­faced of­f­Carat Shed Beach, Cof­fee Beach, Sta­tion Beach and Point Sable.

How­ev­er,pres­i­dent of the La Brea Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion­Alvin La Bor­de said the dis­cov­ery of the dead pel­i­cans may not have any­thing to do with the oil­spill.

Say­ing pel­i­cans usu­al­ly show up dead dur­ing the start of the dry sea­son, La Bor­de said, "I can't see how this is re­lat­ed to the oil spill. Pel­i­cans usu­al­ly diearound the dry sea­son. I don't know why.This has been hap­pen­ing for years now."

Asked whether he be­lieved that the fish stocks were con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, La Bor­de said it was up to the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­ityand the Min­istry of Health to de­ter­mine this.

La Bor­de al­so said it was im­por­tant for the cit­i­zen­ry to know the tox­i­c­i­ty lev­els of the Gulf of Paria, adding, "It is not on­ly pel­i­cans who are dy­ing un­der sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances, but hu­mans as well."

Mean­while, sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea Gary Aboud said birds and bot­tom feed­ing fish al­so con­tin­ue to wash ashore sick and dy­ing.

"To­day there are two dead pel­i­cans (one of which the EMA has tak­en for test­ing). Yes­ter­day there were an­oth­er twodead pel­i­cans. Last week there were over eight pel­i­cans found dead in to­tal. Pel­i­cans have been fre­quent­ly dy­ing on­ly on these oil spill af­fect­ed beach­es and on­ly since thedis­as­trous Dec 17th 2013 oil spills," Aboud said.

Dis­miss­ing re­ports that the birds­died of heat stroke or by div­ing in shal­low wa­ters and break­ing their necks, Aboud said his group was de­ter­mined to get an­swers.

"Un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, FFOS have re­quest­ed copies of the Unit­ed States Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion (USF­DA) lab re­ports on the fish which were sent over­seas and found to be safe to eat," he said.

He added, "When/if these doc­u­ments are made avail­able, the FFOS will im­me­di­ate­ly ex­am­ine all its de­tails, in­clud­ing the chain of cus­tody (where did the sam­ples orig­i­nate, an­a­lyt­i­cal method­ol­o­gy and what were the re­sults of the analy­sis) and we will re­port back to the pub­lic on whether the re­port dis­proves the FFOS find­ings that"sig­nif­i­cant" lev­els of can­cer caus­ing Poly-Cycli­cAr­o­mat­ic Hy­dro­car­bons (PAHs) were mea­sured in the fish and in the sand in the near shore ar­eas of La Brea.

Aboud called on­govern­ment to re­spond to the fish­ery con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

Mean­while, chair­man of the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the IMA will be meet­ing with the fish­er­folk to dis­cuss the state of the wa­ter in March. Fish­er­men from over 14 fish­ing vil­lagers are ex­pect­ed to at­tend the meet­ing.